Competition to win scholarships is very tough and you should be better prepared to present your case in such a manner that it makes you stand out among the hordes of other resumes for the same scholarship.

CV or Curriculum Vitae and resume both are marketing documents and have similar purposes, in that they represent the applicant professionally and provide key and precised information about their education, experience and personal qualities.

A relevant, well-written and neat resume could best assist in scholarship search funds. Many scholarships’ providers ask students to include a resume for scholarship. That should outline their personal accomplishments. Even if there is not tons of experience, student can still put together a solid resume by keeping it truthful, accurate, relevant and organised.

CV and resume differ in terms of their use, format and length. CV is a two or more pages resume typically used for an academic, research or fellowship search.

A scholarship CV should be written purposely. A CV for scholarship should demonstrate the suitability of a student for the scholarship by including relevant information. A CV for scholarship is a vital piece of information that highlights your academic qualifications and achievements, your future career goal and any other relevant information that could help you to get a scholarship.

Resumes are typically limited one sheet of paper (front and back) on the other hand CV will require several pages of information to completely draft one’s accomplishments and experiences. Well-constructed scholarship CV will often minimally include: a cover statement or statement of research interest, academic background, publications information, research experiences, teaching experience, services done, awards and honors.

Though, writing a CV helps you win a scholarship is an art, yet you can master it with research, good writing and a bit of patience.

Below are listed some steps that will help you compose professional looking CV for scholarship:

Gather All The Relevant Information: Don’t just start writing scholarship resume, it would be wise to gather all the necessary relevant and important information before starting. Make a list of all your educational qualifications, honors and awards (if any), achievements, extracurricular activities and information that you think might help. Afterwards critically analyze your list and categorize the information which is worth featuring on your scholarship CV and which can be left behind.

Organizing Scholarship CV in Right Order: After finalizing your list, it’s time to organize it in a manner that will seem objective, professional and leaves good impression of you. You should list your achievements in descending order, which means you should feature your current achievements foremost and then others.

Information on Resume: Mention all the required information such as your name, phone number, address, email, date of birth, nationality, education qualifications, marks or percentage scored, school activities, languages known, computer skills, extracurricular activities, hobbies (only those that matters) or job experience or internship etc. You could also mention the objective and how attainment of scholarship will help you achieve your goal. If you are thinking about simply stating you are applying for so and so scholarship then better not mention it. Don’t provide personal information such as marital status, religious affiliation, political views, gender or sexual orientation etc.

Be Truthful, Honest and Specific: Temptation to write a CV, embellished with achievements that will instantly stand out is usually great. However, just to make your CV stand out you should never add information that you can’t back with facts or actions. Be honest and truthful while mentioning your skills; don’t write down those skills which you don’t process.
Also, refrain from blowing your own trumpet. Yes you want scholarship committee to consider you but over embellishing facts, going on and on about your minor irrelevant achievements and not presenting an objective view of your achievements will not help you win that scholarship.

Checking for Mistakes: Before sending your scholarship CV to its destination, make sure you have included all the relevant information and have edited it to make it error free. Small grammatical or spelling mistakes will reflect poorly on you.

Most importantly, refrain from asking someone else to write it for you, even if you think you are not good at it. Do research on scholarship CV’s online, get some examples, re-write your copy until you get it right and finally have someone check it for mistakes.

Also, remember, CV isn’t a place to show your drawing skills, make it appear professional by sticking to point and using appropriate font size.